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Chapter 13: The Science of the Esoteric

Osho,In one of your discourses you have said: In deep meditation, if the luminous body, the subtle body of a man or a woman goes out of the physical body, it cannot be brought back without the help of the opposite sex, because by their touch an electric circuit is completed and the consciousness that has gone out of the body returns immediately. You have even narrated your own experience when you were meditating sitting on a tree. In that state, your physical body fell down and your subtle body kept watching it from the tree. Then, by the touch of a woman who was passing by, your subtle body reentered the physical body. So the question is: In this experiment why is the opposite sex needed? And for how long? Is it not possible to return to the physical body without the other’s help? What is the difficulty?

A few things need to be understood. First, the entire system in this universe is based on the polarity of the positive and the negative. Wherever there is attraction, wherever you see the pull you will find the two parts, negative and positive, working there. The male-female division, or the division of sex, is part of that larger polarity.

In the language of electricity, the negative and positive poles attract each other with great force. The same principle is behind the attraction between man and woman. There is no fundamental difference between the nature of this attraction and a piece of iron being pulled by a magnet. If the piece of iron could speak, it would also say, “I have fallen in love with this magnet, now I can’t live without it. Either I will live with it, or I will die.” If the piece of iron were able to speak, it would have written as many poems on love as have been written by human beings. Its inability to speak is the only difference, otherwise the attraction is the same. If you can understand the nature of this attraction, it will be easy for you to follow a few other things.

This attraction is generally experienced by all, but it can be of value in the spiritual sense too. And in certain conditions it even becomes inevitable. For example, if a man’s subtle body should ever accidentally come out of his physical body - accidentally, without any previous arrangement or a spiritual practice to bring it out - it becomes difficult for the subtle body to return. Similarly, if a woman’s subtle body happens to leave her physical body by accident - in some illness, in a mishap, because of an injury, or while pursuing some spiritual practice - without her planning for it, it becomes very difficult for the subtle body to come back, because in such a case the person neither knows the way to go out of the body, nor does he know the way to return to the body. The presence of the opposite point of attraction in such situations can be helpful.

The touch of a woman makes it convenient for the subtle body of man to return to the physical body. This is similar to placing a sheet of glass between the magnet and a piece of iron. The iron will still be attracted to the magnet regardless of the sheet of glass in between. So in spite of the man’s physical body lying in between, the touch of a woman will help bring back the subtle body. The magnetic force will cause it to happen. A woman’s subtle body can be similarly helped to come back if it has gone out accidentally. But it has to be an accidental happening; such assistance is not necessary if the experiment is planned beforehand. Why is it so?